China has more than doubled the number of foreign visitors arriving in the country year-on-year, official border control figures show. The remarkable increase follows the introduction of a suite of visa waiver programmes designed to attract international tourists. But, the improvement is not yet enough however to match China’s pre-Covid benchmark of 15.53 million foreign visitors in the first half of 2019.
Beijing’s General Station of Exit and Entry Frontier Inspection records show 1.02 million foreign arrivals were registered in the capital over the first two quarters of 2024, remarkable numbers that are up 257% on the same period in 2023. And National Immigration Administration data meanwhile, indicate 14.64 million foreigners visited China in the first half of the year, up 152.7% from the previous year.
Visa waiver success
Citizens from over 40 countries now benefit from less bureaucratic visa applications when planning a trip to China and 20 countries now have mutual waiver agreements in place with the People’s Republic allowing visa-free travel for a set number of days for business, family visits, tourism, or transit. China has also expanded its transit windows and eased entry for cruise ship arrivals.
Among the many countries that have eased or are in the process of renegotiating travel mutual travel arrangements are Thailand and Singapore which now benefit from permanent waivers. Meanwhile among a list of 12 nations who achieved visa-free status for a limited time, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland had their period of visa-free entry for 15 days extended to the end of 2025.
Early figures in December 2023 appeared to show the strategy had been successful in turning China from a well-known worldwide supplier of tourists to a booming tourist destination, with 118,000 visitors to China from the newly visa-free countries in December last year alone. Official data now confirms the policy of opening up has led to an extraordinary 190% year-on-year increase in visa-free entries to China by foreigners, at 8.5 million half way through the year. Those numbers represent 58% of China’s total inbound travel.
More waivers to come?
In addition to the more than 159,000 foreign nationals from the 12 visa-exempt countries who have entered Beijing in the first half of the year, 33,700 from 54 countries took advantage of China’s 144-hour visa-free transit policy. That’s a sevenfold increase on 2023.
Though tourism to China has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels yet, it is likely more visa waivers are to come in the Republic’s continued drive to unlock the potential of the sector.
